OLD SAYBROOK MINISTER CALLS IT QUITS

ALIX BIEL; Courant Staff WriterTHE HARTFORD COURANT

Worshipers at the town's oldest church sat stunned after Sunday's sermon, most unable to sing the closing hymn.

The Rev. Paul A. Manson's talk on the golden rule concluded with his wishing God's blessing on the First Church of Christ's new minister, whom he hoped members would treat better. Then he said he was resigning and stepped away from the pulpit.

"You could have heard a pin drop. There was a chill," said parishioner Beth Goodnow. Afterward, "a lot of people were crying."

Manson, who came to town 2 1/2 years ago from Cincinnati, had differed with several church leaders on minor points for a while, he and congregants said. Among them, language to be used during baptisms and attendence of children at coffee hours.

"They were aggregate things," said Jim Blair, chairman of the communications committee and a member of the church council. "They were more like relationship issues" than any particular sticking point.

However congregants felt about the issues, "everybody was very emotionally stunned by [the resignation], whether they thought Paul hung the moon or whether they thought he should just be hung," Blair said.

When he was installed in the nearly 350-year-old church in March 1992, Manson conceded he was more liberal than most congregants. He finally was unable to live with that philosophical gap.

A Virginia native who considers Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa model Christians, Manson found the "New England, small-minded, hypercritical, neurotic nit-picking stuff" intolerable, he said Monday, and is considering job offers in Akron, Ohio, and San Diego.

His resignation will take effect in late September, giving him time to say goodbye to the many close friends he has made here, he said.

"I believe we all have a right to our religious beliefs, our own theologies, our own views," Manson, 32, said. "I think we should allow total freedom to express and celebrate that."

Parents should be able to choose the language used in their child's baptism and children should be welcomed at the adult coffee table during social hours, he said.

The church council hired a mediator to help with conflict resolution, which Manson and others said was a matter of the minister vs. a minority. Manson said he got along well with 97 percent of the church's membership; Goodnow judged the support to be closer to "99.9 percent," she said.

A questionnaire circulated in May by S.C. Campbell Lovett, a congregational consultant in New Haven, showed strong support for Manson in 89 responses. Asked why they go to church, 23 people said because of friends and support in the congregation, 20 cited worship and fellowship, 14 said the minister drew them to church and 10 cited the minister's sermons.

Blair, the communications committee chair, said the church -- and Protestant churches everywhere -- simply reflects the nationwide strains of finances and a generation growing into their power positions as the baby-boomers mature.

"I'm not trying to put a happy face on something that's obviously very painful," Blair said.